Biscuits or rolls — same difference isn’t the same at all

Burt's Eye View

Burton Cole

Features Editor

bcole@tribtoday.com

As melting butter soaked into the warm softness, I gazed into my wife’s eyes and cooed, “These biscuits are marvelous.”

“Rolls,” she said. “They’re dinner rolls.”

“Mmbbglpleooomp,” I said as I chewed on either a biscuit or a roll or whatever.

She pushed away from the table and confiscated the basket of breadstuffs. “Size, texture, taste, purpose — they are very different. When you learn that, you can have more.”

Well, that was different.

Look, we all have mental blocks. I remember once when my daughter raved about the deliciousness of the potato salad. She was eating macaroni salad.

“She was 4 years old,” my wife said. “You are not 4. You should know differences are not the same.”

I remember watching “Sesame Street” with that same 4-year-old. We both sang along to our favorite song, “One of these things is not like the other, one of these things doesn’t belong…”

Just once, I wanted to hear Oscar grouse, “Eh, same difference.”

Like biscuits and rolls.

“Still not the same,” my wife said. “It’s not like Coke and Pepsi.”

Whoa. After a statement like that, I no longer was willing to trust this woman’s opinion about biscuits and rolls. So I checked Google and found out that we humans are a pretty confused lot.

For example, we tend to mix up butterflies and moths, and alligators and crocodiles.

C’mon, these are easy to tell apart. Butterflies land on flowers; moths land on light bulbs. Alligators will see you later; crocodiles will see you in a while.

Simple.

Then there are lobsters and crayfish. Lobsters come from the salty sea and crayfish come from fresh water. So it’s easy to tell which one latched onto your little toe by where you were swimming — in the ocean or in the creek.

(The difference between an ocean and a creek is easy. However, there might be some befuddlement between a crick and a creek. Just remember that a crick is not like a cricket, nor is a creek the same as a creaky door, and then you’ll know that you never should have asked that question in the first place.)

Weather is what you have today. Climate is a pattern of weather over years. But you can use either one when you run into an old friend you haven’t seen in years and suddenly realize you have no idea what to talk about. Weather or climate, at that point, it makes no difference.

A pill is round and a tablet is anything else, but both mean you have a headache. So really, what is the difference?

A robbery is when someone steals your money face to face. A burglary is when the thief breaks into your house and steals your money whether you’re there or not. Either way, you won’t be able to buy your breakfast biscuits — or possibly breakfast rolls — in the morning.

“Are you drowning them in sausage gravy?” my wife asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“Then they’re biscuits. Rolls are rotten with sausage gravy.”

No sausage gravy? In the words of the great philosopher Emily Litella, “Oh, that’s very different. Never mind.”

— Question Cole about the difference between the biscuits-and-gravy affect and biscuits-and-gravy effect at burtseyeview@tribtoday .com, on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook or @BurtonWCole on Twitter.